


El Sirenito

by hTeDruknenPotaT



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Family, Friendship, Gen, Magic, Under the Sea, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 09:17:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17722415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hTeDruknenPotaT/pseuds/hTeDruknenPotaT
Summary: Miguel is a mermaid who dreams of becoming a musician.  He makes a dangerous deal with a sea witch to escape to the surface, away from his disapproving family.  For his own reasons, Héctor is willing to help him travel the land to meet his idol.Meanwhile, the sea witch who granted his wish watches over him carefully.





	El Sirenito

**Author's Note:**

> i am NOT putting ANY pressure on meself to finish this, i didnt even plan on posting it but the beginning just slapped so hard. LISTEN i was watching the little mermaid the other day and i realized they had SO many parallels. Headstrong kid who doesn't know what they're doing has a dream and a good voice and makes a BUNCH of terrible decisions which lead them to another world, away from their families.
> 
> The first I thought of this au was Miguel singing part of your world to a statue of ernesto de la cruz and then elena coming in and busting it up with a trident. it's BASICALLY what happened in coco. 
> 
> Gonna add character and relationship tags as they appear.

Héctor Rivera, old notepad in hand, twirled his pen as he stared out into the cold ocean.  It was black, until the sun rose.  The ocean glimmered with the warmest red.

_Que el mar no es azul  
Ay, mi amor; ay, mi amor_

Blue, like sapphires, like the ribbons _La Sirena_ wore.  But early in the morning with the red sun, red like the fire in her heart...

_Que es rojo dices tú  
Ay, mi amor; ay, mi amor_

Upside down, she’d called him, _La Sirena_ had.   _You think upside down.  You want to go up there where you can live upside down..._

_Ves todo al revés  
Ay, mi amor; ay, mi amor_

_You think with your feet,_ she’d sobbed...

_Creo que piensas con los pies  
Ay, mi amor; ay, mi amor_

_“Ay mi amor; ay, mi amor....”_

The words left Héctor’s lips, carrying into the ocean.  To his sleeping Sirena, forever at peace under the waves.  He would write a love song, he decided.  He would dedicate this song to _el mar..._ The sea, his love, his death.

He watched the waves for inspiration until the red faded to the grey of early morning.  Such grey did not spark the kind of inspiration he was looking for.  It ruined the mood, somewhat.  Héctor stood up and stretched.  Perhaps he’d come back later, when it was warmer, and the sky and ocean were blue.  There’d be more distractions, but sometimes those were good.  It was quiet now, aside from the faint barking of a dog.

He didn’t usually pay much mind to street dogs anymore, but Héctor could hear this one getting closer.  It appeared on the horizon suddenly, bounding toward him.

Héctor nearly dropped his notepad in the sand when the dog tackled him.  “Hey–” he shouted, trying to push the slobbering mutt off him.  “Get off me–!”  The dog bit into his sleeve and started dragging him across the beach.  Héctor ran helplessly beside it, holding his notepad tight in one hand.

The dog dragged him to the side of the ocean where the sand was cold and muddy and skidded to a stop, still biting fast to Héctor’s sleeve.  “What are we doing here,” Héctor asked the dog.  He glanced around.  The sun was over the horizon now, and the tide was low.  A calm wave soaked his shoe.  The dog barked, muffled through Héctor’s sleeve.  “What, what,” Héctor muttered.  “I don’t have any food, what do you want...”

He looked down at the dog.  It was an ugly, hairless Xolo with eyes that bulged out of its head.  Seemed the dog wanted him to see something it found on the beach, something big washed up, some driftwood or...  Or was it...

It couldn’t be.  Héctor gasped and dropped to his knees in the wet sand.  There was _someone_ lying unconscious in the water, unconscious or...  Héctor’s heart skipped a beat.  It was a child.

“No, no no no no _, Dios,_ no...” Héctor whispered.  He didn’t notice when the dog released his sleeve, he reached down to turn the body over.  It was a young boy, not even a teenager yet.  Héctor’s breath trembled.  The poor kid, how did he get here...?

The dog sniffed the boy’s face.  Its tongue poked out and licked his cheek.  And suddenly, the boy _smiled._

Héctor screamed and dropped the kid back into the water.  The boy pushed himself up on his elbow, blinking and wiping his eyes.  Héctor sat a distance away, the sea soaking his butt.  “Dios mío– Ch-chamaco, are you okay?”

The boy cocked his head to one side.  He seemed confused.  He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.  Héctor watched him cough soundlessly.  The boy’s brows furrowed, he seemed to be _trying_ to speak, but no sound came out, not even a wheeze.

“Hang on,” Héctor said, getting shakily back to his feet.  “I’m– I’m gonna run and get you some help, kid.”

The boy waved his hand, his eyes getting wide.  His hands moved wildly, trying to communicate something, Héctor stood watching uncertainly.  The boy finally pointed to his throat.  “Can’t speak, huh,” Héctor said.  The boy shook his head.  “Okay.  Well, I’m gonna go find someone who can help you.”

Héctor started off again when the dog clamped its teeth back onto his sleeve.  Héctor sighed, then hesitantly bent down and handed the boy his songwriting notepad.

He winced a little when the boy snatched it up in his wet hands, but he held it up above the water as he took Héctor’s pen.  “Do _not_ look at any of the other pages,” Héctor warned him, so naturally the kid paused, and curiously flipped through the notepad.  Héctor swiped the book from him and held it over the boy’s head as he riffled through it and ripped out any pages with explicit song lyrics on them.  He crumpled the pages and tossed them into the ocean, gave his book one last once-over, the handed it back down.

“Okay.   _Now_ tell me what’s up.”

The boy glared suspiciously at him as he took the notepad back.  He started scribbling in it, filling one small page and then the next.  Héctor crouched back in the sand while he waited.  He watched the sun continue to rise.  It began to tint the ocean blue. 

The boy spent several minutes writing before he poked Héctor’s arm with the pen to get his attention.  Héctor took the pad back, his eyes scanned the paper, but he had to read it over a couple times before he could take any of it in.  Each new sentence hit him like another punch to the gut.

 

_Hola señor!  
My name is Miguel.  I’m from the ocean.  I’m actually a mermaid!  I know that’s hard to believe since mermaids don’t usually talk to humans and I have legs now.  I had to go to this freaky sea witch and she made me give her my voice to pay for them.  This probably sounds really confusing so I’ll start over!  I WAS a mermaid.  My family didn’t let me go to the surface ever so I snuck out and heard some humans playing music on a ship and I REALLY liked how it sounded!  My biggest dream is to be a musician but I knew my family wouldn’t let me and I wouldn’t be able to get very far on land, so I found a sea witch and I already said that she gave me legs for my voice.  But in order to be human permanently I have to get the blessing of a musician, specifically Ernesto de la Cruz because he’s the guy I wanted to meet.  He’s my FAVORITE musician of all time.  Have you heard of him?_

 

The last part hit Héctor the hardest, knocking the wind fully out of him.  He read the message two more times before he could finally come to terms with everything in it.  Miguel had included some thoughtful illustrations to help explain his predicament.  A drawing of himself, clearly, with a fish’s tail, and an arrow pointing to a stick-figure version of himself.  That version was circled, and smiling brightly with one drawn dimple.  He had drawn some waves to represent the sea, and a skull with swirled markings on her face, flowing hair, and evil eyes.  _La Bruja del mar,_ Miguel had written next to her, underlining it twice.  And underneath her was another face, a grinning one, surrounded by stars.  Héctor didn’t need to read the label to recognize exactly who that cleft chin belonged to.

Héctor looked up from the notepad, to the smiling face in front of it, the one dimple matching his self portrait.  He looked back to the note.  “That’s... a lot...”

Miguel raised his eyebrows and gave a slight shrug.  Suddenly he frowned and snatched the pad back up.  _There’s one very important thing I forgot,_ he wrote.

“What is it,” Héctor asked, dreading the answer.

After another minute of scribbling, Miguel handed the notepad back to Héctor.  The first thing he noticed was the illustration.  Three suns, rising over crudely drawn waves.   _I only have three days to get de la Cruz’s blessing.  After sunrise on the third day it’ll be too late._

“Wow...”  Héctor ran a hand through his hair, reading the message once more.  “You need to get a blessing from _Ernesto de la Cruz,_ the famous musician, in three days, to turn into a human and... and you just got here...”

Miguel nodded.

“That’s... weirdly specific.”

 _Do you know where I can find him?_ Miguel wrote.

“Uhh...  No.”

_Do you know anyone who does?_

“I can... find out.  But...”  Héctor hesitated.  He flinched at the kid’s wide-eyed stare.  “Finding him won’t be too hard, it’s... _meeting_ him that might be a problem.  And you said you had just three days?  This doesn’t sound like such a good idea, can’t you just wait it out and then go home?”

 _Well._  Héctor waited.  Miguel stared at the pen for a second, his brows creased, and Héctor recognized the look of writer’s block on his face.  His chest tightened.  He knew what the answer was going to be before the kid finally wrote it out and showed it to him. 

_I kinda might die if I do that._

“Okay.”  Héctor’s voice cracked.  He sucked a deep breath through his nose.  “Okay, okay...”  Surely he could think of something.  This... wasn’t good.  “Okay!  I got–  No...”

He stood up and paced up and down the beach, reeling but forcing himself to think hard.  Ernesto wouldn’t be hard to find at all.  He’d probably hear news about him just by turning on the radio.  The hard part was _everything_ else about this.  Something nagged in the back of his mind.  A vivid memory came back to him, a flash of silver.  There was... _that._  Héctor shuddered.  He noticed out of the corner of his vision that the kid was still watching him.  There had to be another way.  Though already, they had two options, which were two more than this washed-up mermaid must have thought of.

“So you don’t have _any_ plan.”

Miguel shrugged guiltily.

“Okay.  Fine.  I can get you to him.”  The kid grinned.  “But... it’s not gonna be easy to get his blessing.  I know things may work differently down there, but here, on land, it’s very hard to get around and even harder to meet celebrities.  You’re gonna have to work hard to get his attention.  Can you play any instrument?”  Héctor immediately shook his head, muttering, “No, I guess you couldn’t underwater...”

But the kid was eagerly nodding.  He wrote on his notepad, _I can play guitar!_

“That’s good!  Do you have one?”

Miguel winced, shaking his head.  Héctor sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.  “I might be able to get you one of those.  Can you _dance,_ Chamaco.”

Again, Miguel shook his head.

“Have you even used those legs at all?”

Miguel looked away, and very guiltily shook his head.

“You’re _really_ not giving me a lot to work with here.  Okay.  Before we do anything or go anywhere, we need to get you some pants.”

The kid was dressed in nothing but a filthy undershirt.  As if on cue, the dog went bounding off and returned dragging a beach towel behind him.  Miguel patted the dog’s head and grinned as it licked his cheek.  Those two were already well acquainted.  No doubt this wasn’t the boy’s first time on land.

Héctor helped to haul the kid to his feet and get the beach towel wrapped around his waist.  As soon as he stood, Miguel stumbled sideways.  Héctor caught him around the shoulders.  “You feel heavy, don’t you,” Héctor said.  “Takes some getting used to.”

He started forward, supporting most of Miguel’s weight.  The boy took one awkward step after the other, holding tight to Héctor’s vest to stay upright.  “My place is close by,” Héctor assured him.  “You’re lucky you ran into me first because _no_ one else would believe the story you just told me.  We’ve really got our work cut out for us, eh.  I’m Héctor, by the way.  Right this way, _pececito.”_

Héctor wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing.  For so many years, even though he hadn’t been able to avoid hearing his voice and seeing his face everywhere, Héctor had been able to avoid meeting his old friend.  Seemed like a confrontation was finally inevitable.  Maybe now, he could finally put an end to all this.  It was long overdue.  Having to drag a naive, inexperienced kid with him would make this journey much more difficult.  But maybe this was just the opportunity he needed, Héctor thought.  By some weird, _very_ convenient twist of fate.

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler: the sea witch is Imelda. And in case anyone's confused, Héctor is human in this, not a skeleton, he has skin.
> 
> This is a gen story aside maybe some Héctor/Imelda later? I really don't know how far I'm gonna take this story.
> 
> AND NOTE im using "mermaid" as a gender-neutral term bc the word "merman" just feels too weird to me.


End file.
